Its 30 years today since Mrs Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister. It is an important anniversary although as it turned out it did not mark the end of an era in British politics.
Mrs Thatcher resigned but Thatcherism lived and lives on. As Michael White made clear in a Guardian article on 23rd November 1990 the key purpose of Thatcher’s resignation was to achieve that aim. Her chosen successor John Major did indeed see off Michael Heseltine in the Tory leadership contest. He won the 1992 Election and stayed in Office until 1997 privatising the railways in the meantime.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/thatcher-resigns-from-archive
Of course there was a cause for celebration in Thatcher’s departure since the key reason for it was not the adversial brilliance of Labour leader Neil Kinnock but the mass movement of 1990 against the Poll Tax. Thatcher had been warned that it was unpopular, ignored the warnings and paid the price.
Tony Benn in his diary (22nd November 1990) noted that her resignation was ‘dazzling’ news but recorded that her performance in a Commons censure debate later in the day still far outshone Kinnock because she had her ‘ideology’ to fall back on.
Leave a Reply